The Star War of today

Samtemdo8_v1legacy

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evilthecat said:
Samtemdo8 said:
So whats the point of you saying I am entitled to my opinion and then you say the Hobbit movies are bad like it was a fact? How am I supposed to feel and answer about that?
Okay, so what I said was that you are allowed to like whatever movies you want. People like the Bayformers movies, people like the Twilight movies. People like horrible B-movies from the 80s. There are lots of reasons to like or enjoy a piece of art without it being "good".

However, that does not change the fact that on the technical standpoint, the hobbit movies are not great. They have great bits. Some of the actors do a great job (although some do not), some of the visual effects are nice (although some are not). I would go so far as to say that for how incredibly rushed these movies are and how much studio interference there was, it's actually a miracle they aren't worse, it's a credit to the improvisational skills of Peter Jackson and the production team, but they aren't good movies.

People still talk about the Lord of the Rings movies and get excited about them a decade and a half down the line. People study them to learn how to make movies. In a decade and a half, noone will care about the Hobbit movies.

Like, whatever you feel about Guillermo del Toro as a filmmaker (he's made some stinky movies, but some of his films are rightly acclaimed and he has a very strong sense of visual aesthetic which clearly influenced the hobbit production). He at least wanted to make this movie. He was excited for it, he had a clear artistic vision for it and he spent over a year pre-producing it.

Samtemdo8 said:
How is this considered a "BAD" movie again? And how did it looked pretty horrible the 48 FPS? I am amazed we had scenes like from a troubled production at all.
So, let's start with the 48fps because it's pretty clear cut.

At 24fps, the illusion of motion is enough to trick your eyes, but it isn't perfect. This means films have to be shot with a little bit of motion blur to compensate. The main appeal of 48fps is that you can get a very, very high resolution image without motion blur or shutter flicker. In a really good, really expensive production this could be cool. It would make jaw dropping CGI look even more jaw dropping (although it's significantly more expensive to do CGI in 48fps). In this production, there are many, many scenes where, when you saw it in a theatre, it just looks like they're on a set.

Even the CGI in those movies is very mixed. Some of it looks downright video gamey. Look at the first clip you posted. It looks okay in very low quality youtube format, but even here there's a clear disconnect between the CGI and the real actors in makeup. Imagine that in a huge movie screen at high resolution, and it's just going to look like a Blizzard cutscene.

But really, the visuals are not the biggest problem with this movie. The biggest problem is the structure and the story.

The story of the hobbit is a short, simple and quite whimsical story about a journey to reclaim a mountain from a dragon, during which its titular character discovers things about himself. Thematically, it's about how even the smallest person can still be important. It is not an epic action fantasy, and it does not suit being adapted into one. It has nothing really to do with the Lord of the Rings except that one random item Bilbo finds in the hobbit becomes a plot device in the Lord of the Rings, and a few characters like Gollum and Gandalf recur. It is tonally distinct in that it is more childlike, but also narratively distinct in that it is a small scale story. Even at the end when there is a big battle, Tolkien literally has Bilbo knocked unconscious because the battle isn't important to the story.

The hobbit movies have no coherent structure. They have no single story. Instead, they have a bunch of stories mashed together in a way which bizarrely ends up ripping the guts out of the original story so that we can have romance subplots (because we need to trick and patronise women into seeing this movie) and big battle scenes like in lord of the rings and HEY KIDS ITS LEGOLAS and he's so wicked cool and overpowered that he can defy gravity now! Woo, watch out for spooky Sauron! You know who he is because you've seen Lord of the Rings. Does he actually do anything in this story? Lol, no, but he's here and that's important. Oh, and we've got a CGI orc because we need a villain to provide the climax of the first movie since we have to split it into three parts. Anyway, who cares about some interchangeable dwarves and shit. They're not important characters, well except the hot one because he tells a hot elf lady about what he has in his trousers and that's sexual chemistry.

Snark aside, that simple story is gone. It's dead. It's buried under the weight of all these pointless subplots and alternative stories which don't contribute narrative or thematically to what should be the main plot and ultimately rob the main plot of sufficient time to actually develop.

You know, if I were to pick moments of the movie which made me most happy and most excited and which took me back to being a tiny child learning to read this book with my parents sitting by my bed pointing out the words for me, take a look at the scenes in the first movie with the Dwarves, Gandalf and Bilbo in Bag End. Look at the tone of those scenes. They are not amazing scenes, but notice that they do not feel like anything out of the Lord of the Rings, because those scenes are an adaptation of the Hobbit. Virtually nothing else in these movies is.
The story is hardly whimsical when it ends with a battle of five armies that even the book's description was rather grusome and heck the whole politics on who owns the fortune of the Mountain after Smaug has died is something would go over a kid's head.

And even the description of Smaug flying down and eating the Dwarves Ponies is brutal and don't get me started on Mirkwood and Thorin's descent to madness.

Yes I get Tauriel and Legolas (and personally I don't mind Legolas defying gravity because this is a world where Elves have fought Balrogs and Dragon, I mean Feanor killed 100 Balrogs before he died), but the additions like the explination of the battle of moria flashback and the sauron plot actually did happened in the Legendarium and thinking about it I am glad they were adapted because those stories would never work as thier own independent movies because so little was written about it. And we still HAVE the Hobbit story anyway, I don't know what was taken away from this and regarding the Dwarves, they were already interchangable in the books except for a handful like Bombour who is just a fat slob and Thorin is the protagonist of the Dwarves.

I am sick and tired of people dissing CGI Orcs when to be honest I always thought the Makeup-live action Orcs in the Lord of the Rings looked shit, they don't look orc-y enough for me and have very inconsistant looks. Personally I wish they all looked like how Orcs in Skyrim did. Azog looks close to one, but he just needs protruding tusks from his jaw to seal the deal.

And sadly it would be a rather boring climax if they don't show the Battle of Five Armies in its entirty. Not everything of the book needs to be adapted completely.

And finally can we STOP bringing up the fucking Transformers movies in any movie discussion, Bayformers has become the Godwin's Law of Bad Movie Discussion, I mean is it THAT influential of a movie?!
 
Oct 22, 2011
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Samtemdo8 said:
Natemans said:
Samtemdo8 said:
Ninjamedic said:
Samtemdo8 said:
I fucking despise RedLetterMeida.
Very cool!
My hatred for them began when they dissed the Hobbit movies.

Oh no, how dare people not like these films that I liked. /s

Dude, I like the Hobbit films, but that doesn't mean I'm ignorant of flaws or hear from the other side of the argument.
Its the dishonesty they spouted by the 3rd film that made me wrote them off.
Dude, of all things you could be harping on them about, you pick Hobbit?

Let me put it this way: I can't remember what did they criticize exactly about Hobbit, but i do think it deserved SOME criticism.

First movie made me excited for another. Second made 180 on that. When i saw Third one, boy was i glad i didn't pay for it. Fuck, iirc, RLM didn't even hate 3rd one as much as i did.
The 48 fps thing didn't bother me(though, darker picture thanks to 3D projection did), but didn't improve viewing to me in any way either. Overall, i think Hobbits are a wasted potential, and that in hindsight, they were doomed once someone decided to made three full blown movies out of that book.

But anyway: OT?
Uhhh... yes, people would ***** and moan about SW on twatter.
 
Oct 22, 2011
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Samtemdo8 said:
MrCalavera said:
Natemans said:
Ninjamedic said:
Samtemdo8 said:
I fucking despise RedLetterMeida.
Very cool!
Very cool
Very cruel
I also hate CinemaSins and Screen Junkies.

I do respect Chris Stuckmann, even though he has been a bit too...snarky of late.
CinemaSins is about nitpicking the shit out of every movie. Which can be fun, but maybe not when you videos go on about more that five minutes.
Don't watch Screen Junkies or Stuckmann, so don't have opinion on them.
 

Samtemdo8_v1legacy

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MrCalavera said:
Samtemdo8 said:
MrCalavera said:
Natemans said:
Ninjamedic said:
Samtemdo8 said:
I fucking despise RedLetterMeida.
Very cool!
Very cool
Very cruel
I also hate CinemaSins and Screen Junkies.

I do respect Chris Stuckmann, even though he has been a bit too...snarky of late.
CinemaSins is about nitpicking the shit out of every movie. Which can be fun, but maybe not when you videos go on about more that five minutes.
Don't watch Screen Junkies or Stuckmann.
EDIT: Never mind about Chris Stuckmann

And also I hate RLM for thier dissing of the DCEU movies because obviously.

And you know, everytime I browse youtube, I keep getting recommended videos of "Why X DC movie fails, why Marvel did it better, why Hobbit sucks" everytime I see that it triggers me because I haven't been seeing anything related to those movies at all in a LONG while.

And lately I have been getting The Last Jedi is a travesty themed videos recommended to me.

Honestly is movie criticism in the internet dominated by spreading bad press about movies?
 

Trunkage

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Samtemdo8 said:
MrCalavera said:
Natemans said:
Ninjamedic said:
Samtemdo8 said:
I fucking despise RedLetterMeida.
Very cool!
Very cool
Very cruel
I also hate CinemaSins and Screen Junkies.

I do respect Chris Stuckmann, even though he has been a bit too...snarky of late.
I don't watch Honest Trailer but there is a show they do every week charting movies. For me, its a fascinating watch.


As to your previous post about CGI versus makeup. I don't think one is better than the other. A lot of make up and prosthetics looks so plasticky and unnatural. But then CGI doesn't look that great either.


The Thing is held up as a great non-CGI effects movie. I could not agree less. It looks like I'm watched a coloured condom. Jaw chest looks like wood
 

Avnger

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Hawki said:
Natemans said:
And now they made Kelly Marie Tran get off Instagram after tons of harassment.


God, fuck this fandom.
But don't you know that it's just a false flag operation? A way of making fans look bad.

...or at least, that's what some people are saying.
Ha! Not even! It's already been defended in this very thread. Evidently, "something, something, evil all-powerful social justice cabal does something, something" makes the harassment a-ok.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.1055500.24245708
 

Samtemdo8_v1legacy

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trunkage said:
Samtemdo8 said:
MrCalavera said:
Natemans said:
Ninjamedic said:
Samtemdo8 said:
I fucking despise RedLetterMeida.
Very cool!
Very cool
Very cruel
I also hate CinemaSins and Screen Junkies.

I do respect Chris Stuckmann, even though he has been a bit too...snarky of late.
I don't watch Honest Trailer but there is a show they do every week charting movies. For me, its a fascinating watch.


As to your previous post about CGI versus makeup. I don't think one is better than the other. A lot of make up and prosthetics looks so plasticky and unnatural. But then CGI doesn't look that great either.


The Thing is held up as a great non-CGI effects movie. I could not agree less. It looks like I'm watched a coloured condom. Jaw chest looks like wood
The thing is what I see in criticism against CGI is that there is a CLEAR bias from this critics in favor of practical effects.

It can looks like wooden, plastic-y piece of shit and they still would prefer it because its merely "there", with the actors on screen.

Even though the issue being in things like heavily action oriented films no way these stiff practical effects will keep up with the actors.

I mean imagine a Warcraft movie dominated by practical effects, it would be impossible. (And heck I think the movie would be better if it was completely animated with no live action actors)
 
Oct 22, 2011
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Samtemdo8 said:
What's wrong with Stuckmann than, I was attracted to his work becuase he was the more nicer and "giving movie's a chance" kind of reviewer?
Nothing wrong with him? I'm just not familiar with the man's content.
And also I hate RLM for thier dissing of the DCEU movies because obviously.
Well, lots of people diss them.

And you know, everytime I browse youtube, I keep getting recommended videos of "Why X DC movie fails, why Marvel did it better, why Hobbit sucks" everytime I see that it triggers me because I haven't been seeing anything related to those movies at all in a LONG while.
Sure, but on the bolded part. RLM doesn't fall into that category. They mostly think of MCU as competent filmmaking, and nothing much above that. And they also frequently make fun of internet critics that wet their pants anytime Disney announces a film(or announces announcment).

And lately I have been getting The Last Jedi is a travesty themed videos recommended to me.
RLM hated The Last Jedi, though...

Honestly is movie criticism in the internet dominated by spreading bad press about movies?
Wouldn't say dominated. Just look how much content is about creating "hype" about movies. The internet community tends to be a cynical beast, and it sometimes comes up, though.
 

Ogoid

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altnameJag said:
Uhh, if a character from 40 years ago, stripped of nostalgia, would be hated by the people that claim to like her, I'm pretty sure they're the ones at fault, yeah.
I'm pretty sure no amount of nostalgia would be able to overcome a sheer irrational hatred of vagina, a criticism, by the way, I've only ever heard when preceded by "I'm not going to engage with any of the 5-8 hours' worth of narrative and storytelling criticism you just put forth when I can tell you only really bothered to because of".

Like, who cares if blogs like to over analyze shit? If you'd go to war over a character you'd otherwise like because other people like them in the wrong way, that's on you.
I don't know; who cares, to bring up a point I've recently made, if some random internet weirdo decides to make a fan edit of a film? Lots of people, as it turns out - tons of them professionals, no less - when there's a narrative to be spun.

But at the risk of repeating myself, when you have a self-appointed intelligentsia constantly scouring every last bit of entertainment media for the proper and correct application of their political and ideological worldview, and creatives working on said media begin to see their job as signaling their compliance to the former's demands (predictably at the expense of the whole entertainment bit), then the net result is that people, both who agree and disagree with that worldview, will also become more aware of its presence.

Squilookle said:
If it came out now, I think it'd enjoy the same kind of following as The Fifth Element got. A fun, well paced Space Adventure. And honestly, people would probably compare it to Flyboys and Pearl harbor and say "now THAT'S how you do an exciting dogfight sequence!"

If you factor in the immense influence Star Wars has had on western pop-culture and erased it all for the current release of Star Wars... who knows? I wouldn't even know what that world would look like before the film released.
But really, this. All of it.

And for the record, The Fifth Element was an amazing movie.
 

Terminal Blue

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MrCalavera said:
CinemaSins is about nitpicking the shit out of every movie. Which can be fun, but maybe not when you videos go on about more that five minutes.
Cinemasins is a weird get rich quick scheme by a bunch of SEO executives.

Basically, they make videos which are designed to exploit youtube's content algorithms. That's why they literally show up everywhere even if you never watch their stuff. What this means is that they have to be a certain length, which is why.. and if you watch them talk about a film you actually like and know well you'll quickly realise it, they often just straight up lie or misrepresent a movie to fill space, or they manipulate footage to.. say.. cut a line out which actually explains the thing they're going to "sin".

And even when you put aside the creepy financial side of it, their content is absurdly low quality, both in production terms and actual analysis. Like, sure, Red Letter Media have some weird and perhaps slightly dogmatic views on movies now and again, but ultimately they at least understand basic things. They know what a metaphor is. They can spot and pick up on basic narrative themes. The people who make Cinemasins genuinely can't do this.

Samtemdo8 said:
The story is hardly whimsical when it ends with a battle of five armies that even the book's description was rather grusome and heck the whole politics on who owns the fortune of the Mountain after Smaug has died is something would go over a kid's head.
Again, I read this book when I was literally learning to read aged.. I don't know.. maybe 5 or 6.

Like, the battle is severely glossed over because the main (POV) character is knocked unconscious and misses it. We only get a vague summary of what happens. Because the book understand that actually having to sit through a long battle scene would be boring, and that our main character, the person we actually care about, is not suited to being in a battle. As for the politics, they're fighting over a big pile of treasure and a big stone that everyone thinks is really neat, and they're doing that because they're greedy. A child's mind is quite capable of understanding that.

I think the biggest mistake people make in regards to children's literature is to assume that children don't like dark imagery. Children have a very easy time with dark imagery provided it is written for them because they don't understand the emotional consequences.

Now, obviously in the Hobbit movie they were never going to skip the battle of five armies completely unless we're going completely for laughs and dramatic irony, but it's a pretty incidental part of the narrative because, in the book, none of the characters we care about are particularly great fighters.

Samtemdo8 said:
And finally can we STOP bringing up the fucking Transformers movies in any movie discussion, Bayformers has become the Godwin's Law of Bad Movie Discussion, I mean is it THAT influential of a movie?!
I mean, they kind of are that influential..

Like, they make an incredible amount of money, (and unlike the Hobbit movies they haven't needed to ruin the film industry of a small country to do it). By every possible metric, save critical acclaim, they are an outstanding success and a pop culture phenomenon which puts almost every other film ever made to shame.

Again, in a decade people will be talking about the Bayformers movies. They won't be doing so because the movies are good and need to be studied for their contribution to cinema as an artform, but they will still be of interest and relevance. We will think about Michael Bay as someone who had a style, not a good style, but a distinctive and recognisable style which was incredibly commercially successful on his own terms.

Again, he is a great example of the fact that just because people like a movie doesn't make the movie good, but it probably makes the movie interesting.
 

CaitSeith

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Samtemdo8 said:
How is this considered a "BAD" movie again? I am amazed we had scenes like from a troubled production at all.
The whole was less than the sum of its parts. Too much filler getting in the way of the killer for the sake of making it a Lord of the Rings movie instead of The Hobbit movie.

No scene is worth a movie, no line is worth a scene. - Screenwriting 101
 

StatusNil

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Avnger said:
Ha! Not even! It's already been defended in this very thread. Evidently, "something, something, evil all-powerful social justice cabal does something, something" makes the harassment a-ok.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.1055500.24245708
Please to read post more careful. Many thank you!
 

TheMysteriousGX

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Ogoid said:
altnameJag said:
Uhh, if a character from 40 years ago, stripped of nostalgia, would be hated by the people that claim to like her, I'm pretty sure they're the ones at fault, yeah.
I'm pretty sure no amount of nostalgia would be able to overcome a sheer irrational hatred of vagina, a criticism, by the way, I've only ever heard when preceded by "I'm not going to engage with any of the 5-8 hours' worth of narrative and storytelling criticism you just put forth when I can tell you only really bothered to because of".

Like, who cares if blogs like to over analyze shit? If you'd go to war over a character you'd otherwise like because other people like them in the wrong way, that's on you.
I don't know; who cares, to bring up a point I've recently made, if some random internet weirdo decides to make a fan edit of a film? Lots of people, as it turns out - tons of them professionals, no less - when there's a narrative to be spun.

But at the risk of repeating myself, when you have a self-appointed intelligentsia constantly scouring every last bit of entertainment media for the proper and correct application of their political and ideological worldview, and creatives working on said media begin to see their job as signaling their compliance to the former's demands (predictably at the expense of the whole entertainment bit), then the net result is that people, both who agree and disagree with that worldview, will also become more aware of its presence.
Alternative explanation: nerds like talking about shit, and get really into their interpretations of things. Some of those nerds have been making jokes about how the Star Wars universe operates on Highlander rules for black dudes since 1999 and some other nerds making movies went "yeah, that's weird, innit?"

Other nerds vehemently don't like that last set of nerds because "we don't care, we just want good movies", and proceed to write master's thesises about how much they don't care.
 

TheMysteriousGX

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StatusNil said:
Avnger said:
Ha! Not even! It's already been defended in this very thread. Evidently, "something, something, evil all-powerful social justice cabal does something, something" makes the harassment a-ok.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.1055500.24245708
Please to read post more careful. Many thank you!
Nah, you said nerds ran Kelly Marie Tran off of instagram because Rose Tico, unlike Leia "represent a bizarrely irrelevant side story that was forcibly inserted at the behest of a Diversity Board to score points with pundits".

Brutal own on those nerds, btw.
 

StatusNil

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altnameJag said:
Nah, you said nerds ran Kelly Marie Tran off of instagram because Rose Tico, unlike Leia "represent a bizarrely irrelevant side story that was forcibly inserted at the behest of a Diversity Board to score points with pundits".
No, I said they dislike Rose Tico and not Leia for that reason. Nowhere did I defend running her off Instagram.
 

TheMysteriousGX

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StatusNil said:
altnameJag said:
Nah, you said nerds ran Kelly Marie Tran off of instagram because Rose Tico, unlike Leia "represent a bizarrely irrelevant side story that was forcibly inserted at the behest of a Diversity Board to score points with pundits".
No, I said they dislike Rose Tico and not Leia for that reason. Nowhere did I defend running her off Instagram.
Considering nerds get mad at all the white women in modern Star Wars movies too, I'm not convinced.

Course, I don't think her bit was a side story nor is there any behesting done by any sort of diversity board, so maybe the escapist is a tunnel between alternate realities, I dunno.
 

Avnger

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StatusNil said:
Avnger said:
Ha! Not even! It's already been defended in this very thread. Evidently, "something, something, evil all-powerful social justice cabal does something, something" makes the harassment a-ok.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.1055500.24245708
Please to read post more careful. Many thank you!
I read what you wrote mate. The fact that the coherent point you were trying to make translated into the Illuminati "SocJus" conspiracy theory you posted isn't the fault of me or anyone else who read what you actually typed. I mean, it's right there for all of us to see. Maybe you should try reading what you post more carefully?
 

Squilookle

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Palindromemordnilap said:
I feel that without Star Wars westerns might have been popular for even longer

I get what you mean though. Sometimes I feel that without Saving Private Ryan, WW2 movies would still be allowed to be fun.